Hamarana

I just signed up to be part of AGLOCOâ„¢ , an Internet economic network launched few hours ago. Basically, AGLOCOâ„¢ gives its Members part of the money they (as Internet users) generate. Their slogan is ‘Get Your Share of the Internet’. They are also giving the entire company to the Members (it is a 100% Member owned entity.) — You get more cash and shares if you refer new Members, which is one of the reasons I’m posting this… of course .

How it works

How does this work? Once you sign up on their website, when available you will be able to download the Viewbar software, a free toolbar-sized application (half the size of a traditional Windows tool bar) that quietly sits on your desktop without ever hampering your online habits. That’s all you need to do! Just continue using the Internet as you used to… no need to change your habits!

Remember, this is all free, you don’t lose anything, all you have to do is sign up, download the Viewbar when it becomes available and that’s it. Build your network and refer friends, family and colleagues to AGLOCO™ and earn even more!

The guys behind this idea include several Stanford MBA’s and a few individuals who started AllAdvantage back in 1998, which gave over $100 million to its users (I made a whole $52AU, myself) before falling victim to the burst of the internet bubble. Today, the context is much more favorable: The sophistication of on-line commerce, the rapid emergence of communities, the wealth of advertising revenue sources, etc.

Please don’t forget to add my referee ID if you decide to sign up: BBBK-6037. Click here to sign up directly!

Thanks are due to OwnTheInternet for the use of the bulk of the text of this post.

NB: Viewbar will be Windows only, looks like I’ll be playing in VPC for 5 hours a month.

You see them everywhere, ways of fighting spam, email clients with builtin filters… but the problem with spam is not just that you have to see it (or not, if your filter works well) but that the spammers are… *drumroll*…

STEALING YOUR BANDWIDTH
…because they are thieving mongrels…

See, all these filters are doing is STILL downloading your email, and dumping the rubbish in a folder so you don’t have to see it. And thats just not good enough in this day and age.

Think of it like this: Your mailbox on the street is jampacked full of junkmail (its almost Christmas after all) and when the postie comes to put your proper mail in the box, he can’t, because theres no room. Now you can drop all the junkmail on the ground, or take it in and drop it in your recycle bin, but how about putting a NO JUNKMAIL sticker on the box. That stops it from even arriving in the first place, and thats what you want and need to be doing with spam.

Most email servers have the capacity to be queried from a remote site (your computer) and the headers examined to see whats there. A good spam filter should be doing this, and either letting you decide whether you want to download any given email, or not.

Many email clients will allow you to look at whats on the server and delete emails anyway… so why not use them?

Windows: Beckymail has had this capacity ever since I began using it in 1996. It is still one of the very best (if grossly underrated) email clients out there. If you are a Windows user and NOT using Becky, you’re crazy.

Mac: Mail.app now lets you see and operate on whats on the server. In addition, Gyazmail also does it very neatly

External Spam filters: The only one I know of that does a decent job is Mailwasher. I used it on my windows machine and there is now a Mac version. You can get a free version for windows which deals with one email account or you can buy a licence for Windows, Mac or Linux and get coverage for multiple accounts. It also has a bounce feature but I stopped using that when I began seeing my own email address being spoofed and when I began getting bounce messages for mail I had never sent. Bouncing email like this will not do a thing to the spammers but its going to annoy the crap out of genuine users. Spammers NEVER use their own email accounts. Remember this.

In my not so humble opinion (I have always thought that expressing opinion and calling it humble was a bit of a contradiction).. any piece of software which claims to be a good spam filter and does NOT do the operations on the server, is crap. Because its not stopping the spammers from stealing something *you* have paid for. Your bandwidth.

So here’s the deal: learn to set up your own junk filters and stop paying software companies to do it for you, or spring for something like Mailwasher to do the job properly. Other than that, get a good email client like Becky and stop mucking about with rubbish like Outlook Express. You’ll be much better off. Or get gMail.

[end rant]

I really hated that Christmassy theme I created. It was loud, and garish, and not a bit of how I feel about Christmas at all. So, instead, I’ll leave you with the following message, which is much more “me”. I have no idea who created the picture.

There has been a definite upsurge in the sheer quantity of spam on the net in the past month or two. On this blog alone, the comment spam of the past four weeks is almost one third of the Comment spam received in the previous 18 months.

Additionally, an email address which I use for contact purposes both here and on various sites I might sign up at (eg 12by12Daily and others of its ilk) is collecting spam at the rate of about 200 a day, whereas its normal used to be around 20-30.

Add to that the inevitable barrage of chain-emails from friends who are relatively new to the net and have no idea (and don’t want to be told, either) that this fantastic cute email they just sent you is rubbish and has been round the world a dozen times in the last 10 years… (I am contemplating changing my email address and not giving it to anyone I know!)

There’s almost no ham. At Christmastime!

Here we go again, regular as clockwork, its almost Christmas so lets have a challenge to the leadership of the Labor Party.

On this particular occasion, I think it should have happened a long time ago. In fact, I never supported Kim Beazley being leader again after he has failed to make an impression on the Australian voting public many times in the past. I’m sure he’s a really nice man, and he means well, but he’s a fence sitter, and he just does not have the necessaries to lead the Labor Party to victory in 2007.

Something the Labor Caucus voters on Monday night really need to be aware of (but they don’t read my blog so they won’t give a rats ass what I am saying here)… is that last time round, it was not that the Liberal party won (ya hear that, John Howard?) it was that the Labor Party lost. Its a fine distinction with the same ultimate result… but with Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard leading the party, there is a very very BIG probability of a Labor win. If Kim Beazley is re-elected, then the Labor Caucus will have consigned us to another term with Howard (or, god forbid, Costello) running the show.

Please God let the voters see sense on Monday night.